Asylum
by Romanec
Summary: AU. One-shot. Three years, two months, and sixteen days, Eiri "Yuki" Uesugi has lived inside this hospital, with no intention of fixing what isn't broken. On the seventeenth day, a new boy arrives, with scars that match his own. Dark.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Gravitation. Maki Murakami does.**

**A/N: I … have no idea. What started as a random sentence just blew up. Tags into an AR submission I'm writing. Or tags off of it. I have no clue. This really just wrote itself.**

**Warning: Dark. Please just understand that this is rated M. Nothing horribly descriptive, but if I continue this it may just get there. Just note that.**

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**Asylum**

Three years, two months, and sixteen days.

The sun didn't glitter inside these walls. There was no sense of natural warmth to bathe to, or relax in. Fake white paint of happiness was all that anyone could see here - a soothing intent that only brought feelings of death, anger, and entrapment. And then just plain acceptance of living death. How something so clean could be so dirty was beyond him, but Eiri "Yuki" Uesugi had given up trying to figure it out. After three years of living in this place - this hospital- it was hardly worth his time.

_"And how are we feeling today, Eiri?"_ Nurses would ask every morning, with some bright twisted smile on their faces that made his stomach churn and his eyes twitch.

_"Fuck you."_ Was his default, medicate-me-now-because-that's-your-only-cure reply.

Funny how the attempts of his family to heal him were only making him wish he could die _faster_.

It wasn't a natural sickness Eiri had, this illness that had him admitted to this hospital. There was no bacteria eating away at his life, no virus trying to conquer him. Physically, he was a perfectly healthy nineteen-year-old who looked a little too comfortable in his pale white uniform. It was his mind that was a mess - his nightmares that didn't wait for sleep to haunt him. He couldn't really blame his father for locking him away. Being awakened every night by blood-curdling screams from your traumatized child had to be exhausting. Or maybe it was the blood-covered bathroom floor that had been the final straw. Having a son who had nightmares about betrayal and murder was one thing. Having a son who tried to kill himself was quite another.

So at sixteen, five months after what was being tentatively called "that time" and three days after what was more firmly called "the mistake", Eiri had found himself inside _Ariel's Institution_. Surrounded by self-pitying freaks who only desperately wanted attention and justice, clothed in a paper-thin white scrub set, he spent his days wandering the halls alone, and talking to doctors who wanted to fix something that wasn't broken.

_"Isn't that what you want, Eiri?" _They would ask, and damn it all if he wasn't sick of that name already. Eiri. Eiri. Eiri. _"For someone to care?"_

_"I could give a fuck whether someone cares or not," _he would say, and he would always curse when he said it. He took pleasure in the cringes at his language. _"I already know what I want."_

But no one would let him have it, because no one would understand that it wasn't broken.

It was fucking obliterated.

Three years, two months, and sixteen days he walked the halls of this asylum (and that's what it was. An asylum. No need to sugar coat the damn thing and pretend that everything inside was perfectly fine, happy, and _normal_). Never trying to fix himself, never pretending to care. He took his meds when they gave them, because at least being medicated kept the whispers away and the blood off of his hands. He spoke just enough to keep himself from being strapped to a bed, bummed cigarettes off of pitying or sympathetic orderlies, and wrote down words on spare pieces of paper he kept hidden away from prying, eager eyes. He was one of twenty-one patients, and the attention could be spread just thin enough, just long enough, that he could keep his writings safe from dissection.

Unfortunately, distraction aside, that was twenty other also-medicated-to-keep-them-calm-but-it-never-really-works-that-way people that were always around him. Bouncing around him. Touching him. _Talking_ to him.

_"Hey! Hey Eiri! Eiri!" _

_"What the hell did I tell you about calling me that?"_

_"That's what the docs said your name was. Anyway - An. Y. Way! _Eiri!_ Didja hear about the new kid?_

_"Hn." No. And he didn't care._ Why didn't anyone get that he didn't fucking care?

_"The new kid! Said he tried to kill himself. Like you. How have you not heard? Gawd. You're so dumb, Eiri."_

_"Call me that one more fucking time-."_

_"Ok. Jeez. _"Yuki", _then. Whatever. He's coming today."_

He didn't fucking care.

Three years, two months, and sixteen days, and Eiri had made it to the second floor, ever quiet and barely noticed, cigarette in hand as he sat beside one of the few cage-covered windows the building had. The new kid was making quite a commotion among the staff - something to do with his family - and no one spared a long enough glance in their haste to snatch away the cigarette and send him back to the top floor. He could see the large blue car slowly pull to a stop outside the building, shining in the soft drizzle of rain that danced in the hazy sunlight. Watched as a woman and man, nice-looking enough, exited the front of the vehicle, timidly making their way to the back door, as if it held a rabid, dangerous beast. Eiri would have laughed when all that came out was a boy small enough to be blown over by the wind, but any humor died in his throat. Because this boy didn't walk like the others - didn't cuddle into his mother's arms begging for mercy, or try to run away screaming of injustice.

This boy walked with his chin dipped just low enough to shadow his eyes, but with his shoulders straight, firmly but gently rejecting the jacket the woman tried to drape over his shoulders. Steps unwavering as they moved towards the door and out of Eiri's sight.

He pressed the cigarette into the flawless white wall, putting it out, and went back upstairs.

Three years, two months, and sixteen days was yesterday. Eiri has it marked on the white board on his room wall. Today, he stands against the wall of the front of the common room while the other twenty, soon to be twenty-one, still-very-medicated-and-loving-it patients gather eagerly in the center. They were all summoned, and he couldn't escape, as the nurses, bright twisted smiles in place, calmly led the kid from yesterday into the room.

"Everyone, this is Shuichi Shindou. He's going to be staying with us for a while. Say hello." Eiri looks, closer than yesterday, at the boy in the scrubs that match his own. Sees brown hair that has a tinge of what should have been, or had once been, purple. Sees absent purple eyes that should have been, and had probably once been, bright. Purple eyes that lift up as cheerful hellos echo through the room, catching his, and he looks away. He sees the jagged, perfectly white scar that runs deep, straight down the center of a thin wrist.

"Hello," this Shuichi returns softly. Eiri looks back up, and the eyes are still there.

Three years, two months, and seventeen days. Betrayal, murder, and suicide are so _suddenly_ not so forefront.

And Eiri runs from the room.

**End**

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_Like I said, I really honestly don't know where this came from. I had a whole other scene I wanted to put in, but it didn't fit … I may write more on this. Or continue in a series of separate one-shot submissions. If anyone's interested? Just like I said, it might get darker and more descriptive. The scene I wanted to put in certainly was._

_The opinions of the hospital and its patients are 100% Eiri's, and not mine. This may be elaborated, it may not._

_Also, because this might come up. Yes, Eiri prefers to be called "Yuki", but in all exposition, and in his own regard to himself, he is "Eiri". This is important in later parts if I continue. Just yes, that was all intentional._

_Feel free to drop your thoughts in a review. :)_


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